What you need and what you can expect during an extended fast
Bear in mind that if you feel sick during a fast, then stop and eat. It just means that you are not ready for longer fasts, yet. You can extend your fasts as you do more of them.
If you extend a fast longer than 1 day, start using electrolyte packets each day of the fast.
My fasts are water fasts. When you water fast, you can drink water, tea or coffee. I do 4 day fasts, it’s the only length that works for me now, as it is the only length that removes cysts from below my retinas. If you sign in as a guest, you can see my fasts. If you see a shorter fast than 4 days, then that’s only because I couldn’t complete for one reason or other.
First, before deciding on long duration fasts, do short intermittent fasts. Work up to the long fasts. Until you’re used to switching from glucose for energy to ketones from fat, the transition switch can be pretty difficult. Also, the first few long duration, fasts can put you into intense fatigue, especially on the third day. Don’t give up, it will get easier. It has for me.
After 24 hours or so, you are out of glucose from your digestive system and organ storage. Then, your body switches to fat generated ketones. The switch to ketone energy is difficult. It will get easier, I promise.
What you need to accomplish a water fast:
To use this program or to know how deep your fast is, you need to measure your glucose and your ketones.
Glucose Meter on Amazon A glucose test kit is about 24.70. Each test probably costs about 50 cents. Even less if you use the urine test strips.
The Ketone monitoring kit is about 33.99 on Amazon. Ketone Meter on Amazon
The Ketone kit I bought comes with some lances and strips that you can use to measure the actual ketones in your blood directly. I bought 100 ketone strips for 19.00. The urine test strips, although, are fairly accurate but they don’t show between amounts. On the blood monitor, I can get a reading like 1.2, while the test strip may be difficult to tell the difference between 1 and 2 ketone level as it uses comparative colors. No biggie though, the test strips are less costly.
You will also need a glucose blood monitor.
Secondly, water is extremely important. It keeps the kidneys from backing up toxins, so drink a lot of water. Secondly, because you drink a lot of water, you need electrolytes. You can buy electrolytes in packets that you drop in your water container. Make sure it doesn’t have any sugar, else it’ll break your fast. I use LMNT electrolyte packets from Amazon.
The Stages of a Water Fast
Stage 1 Digested food (glucose/protein/fat) : Your blood glucose delivery from your digestive track will slow after 16 hours.
Stage 2 Glycogen Stores: Your organs will begin breaking down glycogen into glucose. Since water is used to hold the glucose in place, you’ll pee a lot. When this is finished, your organs will shrink as much as 10% in size. Also, I’ve read many different posts that show odd times on how long it takes to empty the glycogen from organs. I’ve seen as low as 4 hours and as high as 24 hours. It all depends on active you are. You need a certain amount of glucose, so that’s why these stores are in your orgains.
Stage 3 Fat to Ketone Conversion: As your organs begin emptying your glycogen stores, your liver will begin converting fat into ketones and some glucose. Your body will now begin to use ketones as the main source of energy.
Stage 4 GKI levels: Although the autophagy response of your cells have already heightened since the beginning of your fast, at this stage, when you’re digestive and glycogen levels are depleting, the autophagy level begins to increase dramatically. This is when you can start using the GKI index to get a reading on how deep your autophagy level is. If you’re using the American system, readings like 100 or so, then you divide by 18 to get the mmol/L then divide the mmol/L reading by the ketone mmo/L reading and that gets you the GKI level. The lower the GKI reading, the better. For me, it takes me 3 days to get under 1.5.
At this stage, it gets interesting. There are five levels to autophagy. At a lower reading, all the upper level conditions are being repaired. For instance from 0 to 1, 1 to 9 level conditions all get repaired also.
6 to 9: Weight loss and maintaining it.
3 to 6: Diabetes and Insulin resistance.
1 to 3: Repairing Neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Huntington’s and the like.
0 to 1.5: Removal of tumors and cysts.
Refeeding
How you break your fast is as important as the fast. Stay away from carbs for a while. Why? Because all those stem cells, that have been created during the fast will be used to replace what the fast removed. What you don’t want is for them to create more fat cells. So eat protein and good fat, like avocados.
Unfortunately, your body will want to overeat after a fast. Don’t worry, if you fast to remove a disease, you’ll need to keep your fat stores up. So don’t beat yourself up if you swallow every delicious morsel of food that exists in your home. As long as you keep fasting, the weight will disappear and you’ll find it difficult to gain weight. In this regard, fat is a good thing. I personally know a friend that is underweight and she simply can’t fast, she has no spare fat to set the stage for Autophagy. Unfortunately, she has to live with her acquired diseases.
Here’a video showing why and other things to look out for.
Dr Eric Berg on Refeeding